(Management Case Study) People vs. Process: How Specializing Your Technician Leaders Will Reduce Turnover and Improve Job Satisfaction

This activity qualifies for live CPEL℠ recertification credit.

Purpose: Pharmacy leaders are often tasked with owning both human resource management and process ownership and improvement. Pharmacy technicians are a complex workforce that require ongoing involvement from a coaching, scheduling, and overall personnel management perspective. Our pharmacy department experienced a time of increased pharmacy technician leader and employee turnover which required new ideas to solve.

Methods: Leadership structures often require pharmacy technician leaders own both people management and process improvement responsibilities. Pharmacy leaders identified that pharmacy technician human resource and scheduling management require a significant time resource to manage which often takes priority over improving safety and efficiency in the workplace. During a department restructure, a recommendation was made to divide and optimize the pharmacy technician leadership responsibilities to people leaders and process leaders. Significant discussion and evaluation occurred to ensure the active pharmacy technician leadership workforce was supported during the transition. Human resource management for an 80 FTE (90 headcount) pharmacy technician workforce was streamlined to two pharmacy technician leaders and several pharmacist leaders. Pharmacy technician operational workflows were streamlined to five (now seven) pharmacy technician leaders. All people and process leaders receive the same “big L” leader status in the acute care pharmacy team.

Results: Roles and expectations for pharmacy supervisors (people leaders) and pharmacy coordinators (process leaders) were identified and advertised. Employees were informally interviewed, coached, and assigned to appropriate positions based on their interests and skillsets. Current state, the acute care pharmacy leadership team consists of two pharmacy supervisors and seven pharmacy coordinators. One-on-one coaching and leader development of these pharmacy technician leaders has proven to show growth, confidence, and competence in the roles. Two years of experience with the people and process owner leadership team have been successful. All pharmacy technician leaders receive similar respect and ownership and knowledge of the specialized areas has increased. Safety and operational efficiency workflow implementation and optimization has occurred in all of the specialized areas owned by pharmacy technician process owners. Frontline pharmacy technician turnover was 0% for three months in a row in 2024, the longest time frame in over five years.

Conclusion: Each leader has a responsibility to uphold the Pharmacy Department Culture Principles & Behaviors and provide in-the-moment leadership for all employees. Pharmacy technician leadership turnover has been zero in the past 24 months. Frontline pharmacy technician turnover has decreased from 29% to 10% in the same timeframe. Safety escalations have more than doubled in the last 11 months resulting in earlier opportunities to improve patient care.